The sexual revolution swept away traditional sexual ethics for a more permissive one based solely on consent. But three recent books question whether a consent-based ethic is good for us, especially for women. In this series, we’ll examine three new critiques of the sexual revolution from Christine Emba, Amia Srinivasan, and Louise Perry, as well as arguments about sex and marriage from first-wave feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Sarah Grimké. Does ethical sex require more than consent? What is sex, and what is it for?

The sexual revolution swept away many universities’ rules about who could have sex, and when. But recent years have seen a return of those prohibitions on the grounds that power dynamics between students and their instructors make truly consensual sex difficult, if not impossible. Join us for a conversation with Natalie Hannan (Duke) about Oxford philosopher Amia Srinivasan’s essay “On Not Sleeping with Your Students.” Are there important human goods like the pursuit of knowledge that impose ethical obligations on us? Is a university right to forbid students from sleeping with their professors or TAs?